Cashback website Quidco has enlisted the help of a PR agency to ramp up awareness of its app.

Surname & Surname, the consumer brand agency offshoot of Blue Rubicon, has developed the Quidco Cashback Boutique to celebrate 70 high street retailers signing up to the Quidco app.

The app pays shoppers when they enter the high street stores that have signed up to the scheme – even if they make no purchases.

Argos, The Body Shop, Debenhams and Vodafone are some of the 70 names involved.

Shoppers receive cash into their Quidco account when they step into the shops, and are under no obligation to buy.

Surname & Surname was called in to help Quidco drive footfall for struggling retailers. Quidco hopes the improved app will inject ‘a new lease of life’ in to the ailing British high street and encourage shoppers to browse for longer.

The Quidco Cashback Boutique pop-up store was launched yesterday in Rathbone Place near Oxford Street, allowing consumers to pick up free money in paces including clothes rails of cash and live mannequins draped in money. The store gave away £5,000 pounds.

Quidco MD Andy Oldham said: ‘Shopping is one of the UK’s favourite pastimes and shoppers are rarely told they will be paid to do it. Creating a boutique giving away free money seemed the perfect way to promote the app that literally pays shoppers for shopping.’

In order to gain the free cash users must download the Quidco app to a smartphone, enter a store in the scheme, check in and bank the cash and then share their shopper experience via Twitter or Facebook.

Lucy Mecklenburgh, star of reality show The Only Way Is Essex, ran the tills and greeted customers at the launch.